The two words that we all heard used together over the years in the media has been bitcoin mining and the blockchain.

So lets talk about what mining means and the terms minting and foraging and staking etc.

In the early days when there was only Bitcoin we had people (usually computer geeks who knew about the operating system linux) who set up a few computers with a handful of powerul graphics cards and started to do “bit coin mining”.

Now we have huge companies with warehouses full of computers and special processing boards mining coins all day and nite long burning so much electricity that people are concerned now about the waste and the ecology.

So companies are finding alternative sources of energy to power their mining operations and are findin different ways to mine.

Later we’ll talk about gas fees which has to do with it and POW versus POS and the different kinds of mining machines out there.

You can start mining on your own home computer to keep costs down and to see if you like it.

You can then add more graphics cards to your set up and then look at your options.

There are several type of hardware setups to mine.

  • CPU the old fashioned way (some coins like Monero, Zcash, Bytecoin)
  • GPU- the most well known where you use multiple hi end graphics cards
  • ASIC
  • Cloud based
  • Pool (where you work with other miners and usually with the cloud)

For GPU mining you would get a motherboard capable of having multiple graphics cards, a power supply, fans, a cpu and your graphics cards and some risers and cords and software.

The two decisions on software is if you want to stick with Windows based software or go with what most semi pro miners use which is HiveOS which is a linux like mining program.

Its quite a bit more involved to set up HiveOS since you have to flash a drive and go onto an Etcher program like Balena etcher and then set up your software etc etc.

You could buy preconfigured mining rigs off your local sales boards or online.

The most popular name you will see is Antminer or Bitmain (Bitmain started as a huge China based manufacturer of equipment.

There is a popular $20,000 crypto mining machine called the Ant miner S19 that is in such demand that there has been a back order of them for 6 months.

Spend some time on your local Craiglist or Kijiji or local buy/sell site and you will see all kinds of references to crypto mining devices.

Some people are selling a machine called a helium mining machine.

So we’ll explain some of these different devices that are available and how you can mine.

You can even mine from your own computer.

Its all about the algorithm.

Its all math and something called hashing.

(under construction Dec 16,, 2021)